Popcorn Time Returns Online After Being Shut Down, Its Legal Spin-Off Butter Targeted This Time by MPAA!

Popcorn Time is a multi-platform, free software BitTorrent client that comes loaded with an inbuilt media player. This service allows users to gain access to numerous movies and TV shows without having to shell out any money for it.

A similar service is provided by Netflix but in its case, users have to pay a certain amount of subscription fee to access its contents. It is for this very reason, Popcorn Time is quite popular among fans and it is often dubbed as the Netflix for pirates.

During the previous year the main domain of the service, that is popcorntime.io was shut down after a lawsuit was filed against it by the Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA). The lawsuit was filed by MPAA for infringement of copyrights by Popcorn Time.

The lawsuit targeted a number of developers in Canada who are associated with Popcorn Time. In fear of facing stricter legal action, many of the developers decided to alienate themselves from the service after the lawsuit was filed.

However, after a certain period of time, the service appeared to be back online with an update which was titled- Hail Hydra. The update came with a notification that stated that Hail Hydra was installed. After the update was installed, the service was back to its old form.

The official Twitter handle of Popcorn Time was posted with the following message- hey internets, apparently @MPAA thinks we’re dead, are we?However, this time around the developers chose a different path.

Instead of providing links to pirated movies, they have come up with a new engine called Butter. This new engine is being dubbed as a zombie reincarnation of Popcorn Time by its developers. They also stated that Butter shares the same base code as that of Popcorn Time.

Butter is actually a streaming service that does not contain any illegal content. Its main function is to serve as a streaming tool. The free contents that are published by Indie filmmakers are promoted by Butter.

It should be noted here that similar to Popcorn Time, Butter is also completely free. Users will not have to shell out any subscription fee or make any donations to access the contents of the service.

Some previous reports suggested that a paid VPN anonymizing service might be incorporated into the service to make it a commercial operation. However, doing so would have inventively attracted more legal attention towards the service.

The developers came forward with an announcement in which they made it clear that they do not want to turn the service into a commercial operation and thus no form of donation will be accepted by them from its users.

The latest reports regarding Butter suggest that the service might lose access to its codebase which is hosted at GitHub. Even after completely changing the outfit, MPAA is reportedly still targeting the service for copyright infringement.

Butter has a neutral setup and its developers claimed that the service is completely legal. However, MPAA thinks otherwise and the body recently requested GitHub to take the service offline.

Apparently, MPAA is not too happy with the reincarnated Popcorn Time and thus it is asking GitHub to shut down the main service along with its other forks. It should be noted here that after its revival, Popcorn Time has a new domain name which is PopcornTime.sh.

There are a number of forks under this main domain and all of them are being targeted by MPAA. The notice issued by MPAA points out a number of files that in their own terms are “most clearly and unambiguously designed” to deliver or find infringing content.”